Unofficial news and tips about Google

August 11, 2008

Google Maps, Before the Redesign

For those that hate the most recent Google Maps redesign and miss some of the features that were removed (the multiple search boxes, reordering destinations, collapsing directions), there's a link for the previous interface: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&view=text. The explanation is that Google didn't update the interface for the "text view", an option that minimizes the map and focuses on the search results.

This is just a temporary workaround until Google adds the missing features.

Now I'm even more suspicious of this latest upgrade. There were at least 3 major features that are now missing. That is not a mistake or oversight on their part. I believe they removed them for a reason, but I have no idea why, other than maybe to ultra-simplify the UI even more than it already is. From the major outcry in the Help Groups forums, they are now promising to 'fix' these omissions. But, its now been almost 2 weeks and still no resolution. I think this extended delay is because they are now trying to figure out how to add these features (which were intentionally omitted?) back into the new version. I can understand maybe a situation where maybe an existing feature is broken in certain situations (browsers, config, etc), but to have 3 of them missing doesn't make much sense. I really hope I am wrong about this. But what other good reasons are there that might explain something like this?

I also hate the one search box, I also figured out the natural language thing works. I have been online since college and before Mosaic, so natural language searches have always seemed odd to me. I would have never thought to search for a city and then a business, I am not that linear.